OnStage: Ballroom stories

Mariusz Olszewski seems to be on some kind of five-year plan. The Poland-born dancer performed for five years with his country's first modern company, Silesian Dance Theatre.

In 1996 he moved to Minneapolis to join Danny Buraczeski's Jazzdance. For five seasons, Olszewski electrified audiences with his dark looks, charismatic personality and precision partnering skills.

But Olszewski longed to return to competitive ballroom dancing, which he'd performed and coached in Poland. So he left Jazzdance and began competing and teaching while remaining in Minneapolis. Five years ago, he became a founding member of Beyond Ballroom Dance Company (BBDC), a Twin Cities troupe dedicated to presenting ballroom dance in a theatrical setting.

"When people saw me on one of [Beyond Ballroom's] first fliers, they were like, 'Oh.' ... They couldn't believe ballroom could be presented on stage," he said.

Well, it can be, as BBDC has demonstrated for the past five years. The troupe's first show, "Interplay: Dinner for Seven" in 2004, told the story of a dinner party gone awry with fleet-footed dancing, wicked humor and plenty of glitz. Last year's "Spinning Wheel" rendered a series of chance encounters at a bus stop with nimble grace and comic timing.

Unexpected musical choices

The company's new show, opening this weekend, includes three new group works.

Nashville choreographer Gary Pierce contributed "Lilac Wine," set to music by Nina Simone. Pierce founded the American Ballroom Theater, a company that inspired the creation of Beyond Ballroom Dance Company, said Deanne Michael, dancer and managing director of the Twin Cities group.

"Time of the Season," by Twin Cities choreographer Scott Anderson, features music from the 1960s. "People are not always aware that you don't need to dance to '40s music," Michael said. "In this show we're doing a waltz to Led Zeppelin. If the music is three-quarter time, it's a waltz: It doesn't need to be Tchaikovsky."

The third work on the program is "Puppet Master" by Montreal choreographer Jean Marc Genereaux, who frequently works for the television show "So You Think You Can Dance."

Genereaux also made Olszewski's 2005 McKnight Solo, the electrifying "Tango Emigranta" (which was included in "Spinning Wheel").

TV dance shows a mixed bag

Olszewski and Michael are grateful to such shows as "So You Think You Can Dance" for showing the public how difficult ballroom dancing really is, even if "sometimes the dancing is terrible," said Olszewski. In contrast to the 90-second "tricks" (as Olszewski calls them) shown on television, BBDC creates long pieces with characters, story lines and spectacular dancing.

"In ballroom, each of the dances has a character to it, a flavor of its own," Michael said. "Cha-cha's flirtatious. Rumba's passionate. Tango has an edge. Knowing and loving that about the genre, and telling a story with it, is where we want to take ballroom."

Olszewski, 39, still competes on the Pro-Am circuit with his students. "As an athlete competing, if you can do a step faster, better or sharper, or put in more intricate moves, you do it," he explained. But ballroom dance on the concert stage has its own appeal.

"I love the sophistication of the theater audience," he continued. "It doesn't have to be boom, boom, boom, and we dancers don't have to compete against each other. We just try to portray feeling or character or images."

Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic.